SCALLYWAG PRESENTS BATTLEMENTS: TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A HUNCHBACK. ================================================================ Hello and welcome to Battlements, an awesomely brilliant example of average gameplay and shit graphics. This game was written in AMOS (more of which later.) I certainly hope that you will enjoy this game and it's one of them free PD jobs because no-one would ever pay for it, mister. Battlements is the product of three weeks of intensive programming and debugging, and it has been play-tested by everybody from Queen Elizabeth II to Hitler and the lead singer of Depeche Mode. It is obviously based on Hunchback, that old Commodore 64 and Spectrum game that became a hit way back when bread was only 3 and 6, a pint of lager was a shilling, and Adam and the Ants were screaming up the charts with a pseudo-indian war anthem. I liked them you know; all that war-paint and fancy clothes. It takes me back to my own childhood when I used to dress up in my sisters clothes and leap off of high buildings. Well enough of that, here's a list of the problems I had with the brilliant AMOS language:- * You can only use the collision detection commands in low-res mode. * I could'nt get the sprites the right colour and they kept flickering off all the time, despite the 600,000 combinations of programming techniques I used. I did everything in bobs in the end. Lots easier. * The strange use of the 'If' command in AMAL. It is, as I see it, only used to jump to different labels, and not to conduct arguments. * The fill patterns seem to have strange effects on the colours used. * When I came in from the Horseshoe at 11.30, pissed out of my brains, I perchanced to slip on the glossy AMOS disk and crushed my alarm clock. * I could only save one Noisetracker module per bank. (NT 1.2) * There were lots of other minor gripes but as the lager sets in I've forgotten them. Now don't get me wrong, AMOS is without a doubt the best high-level programming language to ever grace a computer, I reckon, and all the above problems could no doubt be sorted by some top bloke who's not thick. It's just me, I suppose. Anyway, many millions of Quasimodo fans may well be wondering what's happened to the loverly ropes which featured in the original Hunchback. Well I could'nt be bothered to do them and put in some easier-to-program extra's to compensate. There you go. Honesty is just one of my many failures but I don't suppose anybody will mind. I tell you, I was amazingly bad at maths at school and still have little clue how to program smooth circular movement patterns. But perhaps one day I may well learn what 'Cos' and 'Tan' mean and on that happy day I shall jump for joy and kiss my neighbour and gabble on insessently about toasters, carrots, and lions. Toaster. Carrot. Lion. See? This game is an indirect tribute to all those programmers who made Turrican and Turrican II, the best games in existence. These games are so wholly playable and 'fair' that the first time I saw them I forgot to eat, work and sleep. And I can do 'em. Oh yes. Don't talk to Shaun.E.Boy about monsters on level 68 made up of decapitated hands and eye-balls. He knows them all. On T2, there's a short-cut on the first purple level which skips out loads of shite, including the dragon. Yeah. Other games to start me quivering include James Pond II, Mario 3 on the NES and anything where you shoot things, like LLamatron. I reckon PD is one of the best ideas in the world, and the amount of good games, utilities and music disks just start me quivering even more. The amount of rave disks coming out now which contain music equalling and sometimes surpassing the stuff in the charts is commendable. It's cheap, sexy and if you play it through your LOUD hi-fi, will actually shake a pint glass off of a nearby worktop and make it smash on the floor! Oh yes. Anybody who finishes Battlements may well notice the ending- it's crap. Sorry 'bout that but I was getting a bit bored with programming it by that time and it was nearly opening time. Those of you who have actually read this shite and feel compelled to write may reach me at this address:- Shaun Holley 106 Wellingborough Road Earls Barton Northants NN6 OJS That's all folks, and remember, Quasimodo IS a nice man...